A Long December

For the past couple of years, I have posted lyrics from that Counting Crows song as my status update on New Year's Eve: "it's been a long December and there's reason to believe that maybe this year will be better than the last." (It has, for the record, also been a long June and a long July and a long August...) For two years I've posted that status and for two years my life has hopped on a fast train to SuckVille, stopping only briefly in RidiculousTown and AreYouSeriousThisIsActuallyHappeningBerg to re-fuel. So this year, I'm modifying it a little: "it's been a long December and there's reason to believe maybe this year they will reattach my ass." See? Infinitely more practical!

I should, however, have had enough foresight to toss in another lyric from that song: "the smell of hospitals in winter and the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls" because that is exactly how I spent my New Year's Eve: in the Royal Columbian Hospital as Steph's husband got stitches after a dog bit him in the face. Is it a bad sign that I'm starting 2010 in the hospital watching an ER doctor make fun of Steph's husband while using a syringe full of saline to clean out his deep facial wounds, causing a spray of watery blood to land on my arm? Somebody call Adam Duritz because my life story is ripe for a melancholy ballad.

I guess, however, that I should be grateful that I wasn't the one with the hospital bracelet around my wrist. Also, that I managed to cram in two different parties into my NYE celebrations. First stop, to Shira and Jeff's house for a nice, low-key celebration, where I ate my weight in cheddar-flavored rice-and-soy crisps; (yeah, I know, when I party, I party hard). I couldn't drink because the only way to get from New West to Vancouver if you're not near a SkyTrain stop is to drive. I left around 1 a.m. and, because the party never stops when the ArleyMachine is a'rollin', I drove back to New West for a party with Steph and her friends, where I kicked it up another notch by sippin' on some club soda with lemon.

Luckily, my hard-core partying (I might have even had some carrot sticks) didn't interfere with my ability to drive Steph's husband to the hospital, so I finished the night by flirting with (okay, it was not so much flirting with as it was 'speaking words to') the cute ER doctor. It was certainly a memorable evening. May old acquaintances be...smart enough keep their faces away from a cranky dog's mouth.

I guess all that's left is to set some New Year's resolutions. The problem is that there's so much to choose from. In 2010, I will need to get a city/country to live in, a job, an apartment, a date, a social life and a hip that doesn't make me stagger around like a New Year's Eve reveler after too much bubbly. That's a To-Do list longer than Barack Obama's! Here, then, are some things that I would like to do in 2010 (as opposed to things I have to do...like get my shit together).

1. Get myself back on a good sleep schedule. Since becoming unemployed, I've gotten into the bad habit of going to bed at 1 a.m. and not getting up until 10. All I need is a World of Warcraft addiction and I would be the poster child for slackerness.
2. Try, for about the millionth time, to kick my Diet Coke addiction and get back on the wagon. Diet Coke is my crack. If I could inject it in veins, I could.
3. Drink more water.
4. Figure out different types of exercise I can do. Right now, I'm pretty much stuck with the elliptical machine or swimming (which sucks because I have to do it at Canada Games Pool along with dozens of other people in the same lane trying to kick you in the head). It would be so nice to do exercise that's actually meaningful and challenging. Every time I watch a basketball game on TV, I get a little twitchy.

Happy New Years, Young-And-Hip-sters!